Contents

There have several calls for help to the readers, but this post being one of them is targeting the entire Linux community. Every user who wants to install Linux on his computer starts at the scenario where he needs to boot from the CD or USB. This is something that has become natural to us, the Linux users. But it has the potential to make/break the experience for new users who want to try Linux. This is because an ordinary Windows or Mac user has never had the need to access the BIOS to set CD or USB as the boot device. Most likely Windows or Mac came pre-installed on his system.

One of the oldest and best sources for news regarding Linux powered devices, LinuxDevices, is worryingly silent today. Attempts to reach both the main page and the forums return database errors. This comes a few months after its publisher, Ziff Davis Enterprise, was acquired by QuinStreet.

Desktop

Most often than not, the brand has an abstract name. General Electric, FIAT, Airbus, Pepsico, RedHat – all these companies have names which have nothing to do with names of their founders. Although, there are still some cases when person’s name becomes a name of the brand. Let me introduce a person who’s name became a brand. At least, in the Linux world. Please meet: Artyom Zorin.

Despite all the good work in */Linux and efforts by government to restrain the largest excesses of M$, it is still a growing cancer in IT. The growth in the client division is radically curtailed but there’s still some. Until it quits growing, there is no hope of salvation from the cost and complexity in IT that M$ causes. I hope M$’s recent numbers are just some accountants’ tricks, but I will not declare the battle over until retail shelves are jammed with GNU/Linux everywhere.

Server

Big Blue has not made any huge proclamations to date, but it is not exactly a secret that the people in charge of IBM’s Systems and Software Group want the Power7 processor and its follow-ons to grab a larger share of the systems racket.

To that end, Big Blue is reviving a Linux-only variant of its Power Systems lineup with cheaper hardware and software pricing that it says gives better value on Linux workloads than an x86 setup.

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that five new companies from Japan are joining the organization: Ashisuto, Aisin AW, JVC KENWOOD Corporation, NTT DATA MSE, and Turbo Systems.

These are results collected by OpenBenchmarking.org from the thousands of results and over a million component configuration statistics (there’s statistics on more than 1,506,821 computer components as of Sunday and more than 155,872 test results that are publicly available). With these statistics being from OpenBenchmarking.org, these trends are not of the “normal” Linux user-base but rather more representative towards Linux/hardware enthusiasts, the tweaking/benchmarking crowd, and enterprise users. Regardless, they provide a very interesting look at the popularity of various brands and software components on Linux.

Ben Hutchings has confirmed that he will maintain Linux kernel version 3.2 as a long-term kernel at kernel.org for an indefinite amount of time. While this was announced by the developer last weekend, it has now also been mentioned by the primary stable and long-term kernel maintainer, Greg Kroah-Hartman, in the release email for Linux 3.2.16; with the release of this version on Monday morning, Kroah-Hartman has discontinued the maintenance of Linux 3.2 and handed it over to Hutchings.

Graphics Stack

One week ago following the committing of the major libdrm re-write for the Nouveau project, the “NVFX” Gallium3D driver was dropped and succeeded by a new “NV30″ driver for the GeForce FX/6/7 series GPUs. Unfortunately, for at least some hardware, this Nouveau support is still a busted mess.

There’s now the first tiling manager for Wayland. Called ADWC, this open-source tiling manager can already start applications using XWayland. There’s some videos showing off this Weston fork, including the Opera web-browser and KDE’s KWrite running on Wayland.

Applications

Reinventing the wheel is frequently cited as a barrier to the development of open source software. Critics point out if developers worked together on projects, instead of duplicating software that already exists, this would help to simplify matters for users, and actually significantly advance the development of established open source projects. There is an element of truth that development time is wasted, and it is not hard to identify examples of developers reinventing the wheel in their code, rather than contribute their development skills to projects with broadly similar objectives.

Sunflower is a twin panel File manager for Linux. Sunflower is use to view or browse , cut, copy and paste several files from different directories using graphical user Interface. It also supports drag and drop functionality between different directories. The light weight and small size make it more attractive among users. It can be highly customized with handy hot keys. Moreover it can be improved and enhanced by with the help of plugin. The different tasks can be performed with sunflower like add or edit bookmark, empty history and more.

Games

Oliver McFadden, the developer that wrote the Radeon Revenge reverse-engineering utility, was thinking about writing an open-source BIOS for Radeon GPUs, and brought ioquake3 to the Nokia N900, decided to write a new GL Shading Language (GLSL) renderer back-end for the id Tech 4 engine.

Update: We mentioned before that the blog mentioned belongs to reader Dugan Chen. Dugan was nice enough to update us, rescinding OUR foolish and supposed assumption that he was its owner. Sorry Dugan, and thank you for the update!

If you’re not busy with going through the extensive Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge Linux test results (the Ivy Bridge Linux Mesa graphics results will be out in the next few hours), here’s some Linux gaming news for today.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

Dr. Mathias Klang is a researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Göteborg in Sweden. His research revolves within the field of legal informatics with particular interest in copyright, democracy, human rights, free expression, censorship, open access and ethics. He holds Master of Laws and Ph.D. degrees.

Latin America is a big place with many opportunities for KDE; major deployments of KDE software are proof. Over the years, groups of KDE developers have emerged in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and probably other places. These groups work together to make a better KDE. As we know, meeting and talking in person is important to strengthen the bonds in a community. So we decided to organize a Latin American meeting of KDE contributors following the lead of the first Akademy-br in 2009. Like Akademy-br, the first LaKademy will be similar to a sprint for developers and one for people interested in promoting KDE in this part of the world.

Plasma Active is coming together nicely and quickly. When I watched the first videos published just a few months ago, I thought a lot of hard work was needed, but I was not the only one. Those videos were simply proving that Plasma Active was running successfully, but not even close to displaying the finished product. Today we are very close to seeing Vivaldi become available, and with it, the first official version of Plasma Active preinstalled on a device. It’s a serious thing, and Plasma Active developers are hard at work improving things like maniacs. A testament of that is the following video, which captures the Plasma Active file browser in action.

Google has published the list of 60 student proposals that have been accepted for Google Summer of Code 2012 for KDE. It means that 60 students will be able to work full-time on changing the world this summer! A big thank you to Google for making this possible.

GNOME Desktop

Whether you’re a beginner or you’ve been using Linux systems for years, you probably have an opinion on what the best distribution is. “Best,” is obviously a relative term, and we understand that what’s best for beginners may not be best for advanced users, and so on. Still, Linux distributions come in all different shapes, sizes, complexities, styles, and types. We asked you which ones you preferred, and now we’re back to take a look at the top five distros based on your nominations.

Concerns about the apparent health of Slackware Linux were eased after the community Linux distribution’s web site was back up and running, after several days of being dark.

The site’s unexpected unavailability led to lengthy and at times heated discussions about the overall life expectancy of the project on both LinuxQuestions.org and DistroWatch.

The focus quickly shifted from the problems with the website to worries that Slackware itself was experiencing financial problems, when top Slackware contributor Eric Hameleers responded early in the LinuxQuestions thread with a brief “Old hardware, lack of funds…” statement.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

If you have not been following the saga of the Mageia Linux distribution then you are unaware that Mageia 2 is slated to be released on May 15th. At this point the distribution is in Beta 3 testing and then will have a Release Candidate out right around May 2nd.

Another Linux distribution with an upcoming release I have been looking forward to made a Beta release. Mageia Linux 2 is on a fast track now, with the final Beta released a few days ago, the Release Candidate due in less than two weeks, and the final release due two weeks after that.

Again PCLinuxOS delivers a release of impeccable quality in the face of a community that demands the highest standards. This distribution is becoming increasingly user-friendly, and the features continue to mount up.

Red Hat Family

Software giant Red Hat(RHT), a leader in open source technologies as well as cloud computing has now become one of these names that have placed me in the predicament of trying to justify its lofty valuation to potential investors. I’m not going to pretend that this a “rock and hard place” type of situation, but how do you rationalize taking a position in a stock sporting a P/E of 80 after it has already gained 50% on the year? It gets even more remarkable when you consider that a competitor such as VMware(VMW), which by many standards already qualifies as expensive but trades at a multiple that is 14 points less

We are restarting the monthly LUG meetings and I planned to deliver a presentation about the imminent GIMP 2.8 release (there is a lot of disinformation about it). But since GIMP 2.8 RC1 cannot be installed on older Fedora releases due to missing dependencies, I had to move with the times and upgrade the OS on the netbook. Following are my candid impressions, as a person who skipped the last two Fedora releases, so part of it may be really old and known.

After Red Hat Legal caused a delay in the Fedora 18 code-naming process, the list of possible code-names for this “Beefy Miracle” successor have been narrowed down to eight. As expected by now, all of the names are quite peculiar and the Fedora board is trying to decide whether to even continue this code-naming process.

Well this Thursday I made my mind to install beta release of f-17. I had to make a boot able usb because my dvd drive gave up long back. So I used livecd-tools to make bootable usb. I started installing, it was going smoothly but suddenly I got notification for access Network for installing repo .. bad ah because you screwed :). Later found out there was bug in livecd-tools :(, even fedora wiki was not updated about use of livecd-tools that time (Now updated, thanks to FranciscoD). Well I install fedora in my office laptop VM, made again usb bootable with correct steps and finally able to Install.

I recently received an Arduino Uno board as a gift and I needed to run the Arduino software on my Debian 6 + KDE machine in order to interact with this little beast. This should work on other desktops as well, such as Gnome or XFCE.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Ubuntu has touched the lives of many among us in different ways. I can’t speak for everyone here and hence I will share a few of my experiences with Ubuntu. For me, Ubuntu was the gateway to Linux and the whole open source way of thinking. Ubuntu taught me that computers are not all about Windows OS and that there are far better alternatives than the “default” Windows desktop which you have been made to see and learn from a younger age. Lets go back in time and see how Ubuntu evolved over the years to become what it is now – a totally awesome, user friendly and fast changing Linux based distro for human beings.

The world is moving increasingly towards environments where consumers and employees download apps from sanitized app stores and use software that is native to the devices on which they run. This is happening as a result of the increasingly important role of mobility in business and consumer life, and the security threats that lurk in the World Wide Web. Not only are app stores becoming more prevalent in both corporate and personal contexts, but companies are using virtualization technology that allows them to serve employees virtual images of software, with the effect that data is isolated from the web, and servers are insulated from unknown intruders. So does the emergence of these closed systems mean the web is losing relevance?

One of the great Linux desktop myths is that it’s hard to use. People still think that you need to be some kind of mad computer wizard to use Linux. What nonsense. Desktop Linux has been as easy to use as any of the mainstream desktop operating systems for over a decade. How easy is it? My 79-year old mother-in-law, Hulvia, can use it.

She arrived a few weeks ago with her Windows laptop, but without her power cord. So, she needed a computer of her own. As I went down to garage/server room/spare computer storage locker, “What the heck, if Jason Perlow’s father-in-law could pick up Ubuntu Linux in 2007 at the age of 71, why not my mother-in-law at 79 in 2012!”

Ubuntu has done great things for the Linux community. Indeed, many of us many not be here if it wasn’t for Ubuntu and it’s newbie-friendly ways. However things have gradually changed over recent years. First the brown colour scheme changed to purple, as it seemed that Ubuntu was adopting a ‘Mac look’ (are the window maximise and minimise controls still in the top left hand corner?). Then last year, the Gnome 2 desktop evironment was dropped and replaced with Unity. Many users struggled with 11.04 as Unity was unstable, and as a result that release was for some (me included) unusable. Hwever it has been reported amongst Hull LUG members that Unity has been improved since its introduction last April, and the stability issues for the most part resolved in the last release in October 2011.

The Linux world is preparing for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS official release to use and evaluate the next “big” version of the world’s most successful Linux distribution. Much has been said about the last Ubuntu versions and Canonical’s strategies. Many expressed delight with the new technologies introduced lately by Canonical, while others expressed disappointment with some of the changes. This week, we talk to Jono Bacon who is the community manager of Ubuntu, in an attempt to disentangle the thoughts of the linux users community, and understand how a big community is organized and guided the Ubuntu way.

Most Popular Linux Distribution: Ubuntu (and Its Variants) There are Linux distributions of all shapes and sizes, with varying levels of complexity and difficulty. Some are super-easy to install, and can be installed like any other OS, with minimal knowledge of the command line—you click “OK” a few times and you’re up and running. Others require you get your hands really dirty with the underpinnings of the system you’re building, making sure it’s just right for your specific needs. So which do you prefer? Well, earlier last week we asked you what you thought the best overall Linux distribution was, understanding that “best” is a relative term. Then we took a look at the top five Linux distros, based on your over-400 nominations, and put them to a vote. Now, we’re back to crown the overall winner.

Ubuntu captain Mark Shuttleworth said the next cycle of Ubuntu releases, code named Quantal Quetzal, will incorporate new font and icon innovations to further dazzle the Linux client as well as the Quantum virtualized networking and possibly a new form factor

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin final is almost out. The final release it scheduled to be out in the 26th of April 2012. After you actually get done with the installation, there would likely exist a heap of things you still need to take care of. This post will share some interesting insight and ideas about what you can and should do after a successful installation.

Flavours and Variants

While my own interest in KDE is waning presently, that has nothing to do with Kubuntu itself, or what I feel was entirely needless panic by some over its continued status and development. I continue to think Kubuntu will be fine, and I believe being freed of direct Canonical sponsorship may offer tangible benefits for it. With GNOME 2 now essentially gone (there is that Mate fork though), Kubuntu was the only Ubuntu variant remaining that I felt had any serious enterprise desktop potential. In fact, I think it is potentially a more interesting distribution freed of it’s Canonical connection, where it seemed such possibilities were blocked. I also do like that their new sponsor, BlueSystems, which calls NetRunner, itself derived from Kubuntu, a GNU/Linux distribution. Say it loud, say it proud!

Personally I hope they could eventually merge their work with upstream Debian directly. One advantage Kubuntu offers over Debian KDE presently is that they package and adapt KDE stable releases much quicker. Or maybe thier work could also enable KDE on Trisquel, which I recall converts the Ubuntu foundation into a fully free as in freedom core distribution by removing all non-free parts and offers it with a linux-libre kernel. As a KDE mother distribution, Kubuntu by itself is easy to rebrand to target commercial entities and other kinds of institutions, as well as to provide a base distribution for other projects.

The device sports an E-Ink display with a resolution of 144 x 168 , Bluetooth 2.1, a teeny-tiny vibrating motor for alerts, and app installation via the dedicated Pebble app store which is accessible on both Android and iOS. It also features a three-axis accelerometer which third party apps will be able to make full use of using the Pebble SDK. This is Allerta’s slimmest device to date and reduces some of the uber-geek stigma which came with its predecessors bulk.

Networking giant Cisco Systems has remained an industry leader by understanding and leading industry transitions. One such transition occurring is the emergence of software defined networking (SDN) and the OpenFlow protocol and it’s a transition that Cisco doesn’t plan to miss.

As I told in a previous post, I came with the idea of a panel about design in the FOSS world at the upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting but then chickened-out and resumed to photography stuff, still the panel will happen anyway. I think is a good idea to write-down my thoughts on the matter, since the outcome of the panel is going to be a direct opposite of what I envisioned (that’s what I expect, giving the panelists).

So, what’s the problems? while proper Free and Open Source Software happens in the bazaar, traditionally design is done the opposite way, in the cathedral, an unavoidable conflict. On top of that, there is also the problem of the designers being primadonas, considering their work dark magic, voodoo, incomprehensive by mere mortals. It doesn’t help a lot of volunteer developers participating in communities have big egos too, as they are doing the work for free, so they expect at least that.

Those are the things you should tell people first, if you want to spread Free Software. And you should do it in a balanced way, mentioning software as such just en passant. You should explain that problems like those above are tales of stupidity and incompetence that waste mountains of public and private money, at levels where it almost doesn’t matter what the license of the involved software is. Let’s help people to fight software-related wastes and proprietary standards, without caring at all if they do not give back to the “Free SW community”! This will create an environment much more conducive to Free Software than we could ever obtain by continuing to repeat ad nauseam the GNU Manifesto.

The free-market capitalistic definition of companies’ goals was, for a long time, very simple: to make as much profit as possible. With that in mind, the only difference between a success and a failure was the investor’s return on investment. Short-term profit became priority number one. However, this classic definition of capitalism hastransformed the way companies are perceived in the population over time.

Recently I was on the task of getting some scripts together for handling FTP commands to run several time a day to move files around. Unfortunately, the platform that was already in place is a Windows 2008 R2 server. But, being optimistic we moved forward on the project. After digging around we soon found out that the list of options is slim on solutions for doing FTP transfers from scripts on Windows. There are really no known good solutions that are free that offer extensible scripting abilities. We ended up selecting CuteFTP Professional which was purchased by somebody else a few years back so a license was already owned for the software. I’ve used the client for CuteFTP in the past so I felt fairly comfortable with this selection. I also thought about installing Perl for Windows and trying to script something in there, which might still be a viable option.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

You may have noticed that the usual suspects are already reporting that a new stable version of the Mozilla Firefox browser has been released by Mozilla. While it is true that a build has been moved to the release server, we have seen in the past that this version can get replaced in last minute if the build does not pass the company’s quality controls.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

Getting Started with OpenOffice.org was a handy user guide chocked full of information on the care and feeding of the Open Source office suite. But like the suite itself, it has been superseded by the efforts of The Document Foundation. With updates, rewrites, and the addition of illustrations and images for 3.4, reading up on the popular application is easier than ever.

Healthcare

It is sometimes said that computer scientists worry about only three numbers: 0, 1, and N, where N tends to get very large. Sometimes such oversimplifications can lead to astonishing insights, such as the one that I had 25 years ago in June of 1987.

Do you remember 1987? Greed was good, junk bonds were king, and zero was the biggest and most important number on Wall Street. Zero drove all the arbitrage equations, because both sides of the arbitrage are supposed to sum to zero. Arbitrage is a special case of the zero-sum game, a prominent theory promulgated by all respectable business schools of the day. Zero-sum logic made it a moral imperative to ensure that success was not just about winning, but about making sure that everybody else lost. You were not forced to like the terms of the game, but you were damn sure forced to accept them as they only way to play.

Open source is powering a revolution in medicine and health care in multiple ways. Open source software and methods make large-scale collaborative research projects feasible, multiplying the brainpower applied to a project, expanding the data pool, and creating transparency and accountability. This is a huge win for the advancement of new treatments and cures, and cutting the costs of research. Open source practice and records software cut the costs of running medical practices, and puts practitioners in charge instead of software vendors.

BSD

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

Here’s my wishlist. I think there is plenty of good software in FLOSS so it is not a high priority to create more unless someone has the urge. I think the highest priority of the Free Software movement should be to educate people about Free Software.

Project Releases

Public Services/Government

French president Nicolas Sarkozy says that 15 percent of the IT budgets of the country’s public administrations is spent on purchasing services on free and open source software and that this amount is growing by 30 percent per year, reports CNLL (Conseil National du Logiciel Libre), a trade group representing IT companies providing free and open source software services. Sarkozy told the group that free software is “strategic for the development of France’s digital sector.”

Standards/Consortia

I asked to see the library and found there mostly old Windows books, clearly “decommissioned”: technologically old, useless books. Can it be that, even when it comes to books (and, by extension, knowledge), underdeveloped African countries are just a landfill for the Global North?

My latest career was teaching and it was natural to use IT to collect and analyze data on the performance of students but also to use IT for teaching and later to teach students how to do IT for their lives. Before I used GNU/Linux I owned a variety of PCs, some home-built but I used DOS and Lose 3.1 on them. After a few years I was using Lose ’95 in a classroom and the damned machines were frequently crashing, just like Bill Gates’ experience (He laughed. I didn’t.). I switched to Caldera GNU/Linux and was suddenly and dramatically free of crashes.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

Over the past decade, Asia’s transition to the leadership position in global oil consumption is well known. Starting in 2002, OECD countries slowed their consumption growth for oil and subsequent to 2005 actually saw their consumption decline. This process freed up limited oil supplies to Asia, which now accounts for 31% of total global oil use, as of the latest data. | see: Regional Share of Total Global Oil Consumption (as of Q4 2011).

Amid new regulation, lower profits and a dreary market for mergers and acquisitions, several banks are planning to trim investment-banking units that were built for an era of deals aplenty.

Having already slashed bonuses, banks including Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley are preparing to cut dozens of jobs, including some held by senior bankers, according to people familiar with the matter. As they pursue this targeted round of trims as soon as next month, they and rivals are also revisiting profit expectations for their advisory businesses, people familiar with the matter said.

Intellectual Monopolies

Trademarks

A Chinese official said on Tuesday that Apple does not have ownership of the iPad trademark in China, signaling that authorities could be favoring local company Proview in its battle with the U.S. tech giant over rights to the iconic brand name.

Fu Shuangjian, the vice minister of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), made the comment as Apple faces an ongoing court battle with Proview for ownership of the iPad trademark.

The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again